


Cyclorama (ACT I)

by basilthymee



Series: Cyclorama [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Panic Attacks, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basilthymee/pseuds/basilthymee
Summary: Scaena Garzes has crippling abandonment issues and is terribly overworked, leaving her mental health in a questionable state.When her wife suddenly leaves for a prolonged business trip, the world she had gotten comfortable to collapses, causing her for once to go out on a late night party with her friends.But of course, something takes the turn for the worse...
Relationships: Scaena Garzes/Aubreb Villow
Series: Cyclorama [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656040
Kudos: 2





	Cyclorama (ACT I)

**Author's Note:**

> Decided to start a lil series on my 6 trollsonas to deepen their character a bit! I'm not sure how long Cyclorama will be, but either way, I really hope you enjoy!

**[Act 1]**

The foul stench of ink on paper makes you scrunch up your face in disgust, the only sound accompanying you in the dark room you’ve locked yourself in is the rhythmic sound of the pen tip sliding over the paper.

You lean back in your chair and stretch your arms towards the ceiling, the mind-numbing sound of the clock ticking managing to make its way into your ears as you zone back into reality.

With a fatigued glance, you look down at the almost infinite sheets of paper you’ve spread across your desk, covering every single inch of its original, sleek green design.

Reluctantly, you slide the chair back and stand up, only to fall back down onto your chair as you realise both of your feet have fallen asleep. Of course, you’re used to this, a talented theater director like you must spend hours sitting at their desk writing away, creating revolutionary shows that will change troll society forever.

After a couple of minutes of the excruciatingly annoying process known as waking your feet up, you shamble your way to the door and rest your hand on its cold, metal handle. 

Just before turning the handle, you rest your head against the wooden frame and listen. That familiar melody beckons you, like a forbidden temptation. The sound of your wife’s favourite disc has now become a constant in your life, always associated with the warmth you feel both inside and outside when you embrace her.

You finally give in and open the door, a wave of warm light slightly stings your eyes, you instinctively pull your forearm up to your face to protect your nocturnal sight.

“Did the serpent finally come out of the cave?” Aubreb sneers.

You lower your arm and shoot her a tired glance. She's wearing one of her oversized sweaters with the writing “Big Momma” plastered over it in fluorescent pink letters, and her hands are clasping a cup of what you assume is tea.

“Well what have you been doing all day ‘Big Momma’” you reply, putting ridiculous emphasis on the “Big Momma”.

Aubreb puts down her cup of what you can now confirm is tea and shuffles over to you, eyeing you with a particular gaze.

She slightly leans down and rests her arms on your shoulders, gazing into your eyes.

“Do you know how long you’ve been working for dear?” she asks as her eyebrows crumple into a worried look.

“Two hours?” you naively respond. 

Aubreb lets out a deep sigh and pulls you closer to her, you can identify every single crease and groove on her skin.

“Seven hours, Scanea. You’ve been working your ass off for seven. Hours. Did you even realise?”

“The show must go on, dear.” 

Her confused gaze changes to disappointment in record time as she takes her arms off you and shuffles back to the couch she was sitting on.

“You’ve said that exact same phrase four times now, don’t you need a break?” she says with a slight annoyance in her voice.

You make your way over to her and plop yourself down onto the adjacent pillow.

“If I take a break now, what’ll keep me motivated to finish my work?”

Aubreb turns over to you and rests her head on your shoulder.

“You’re overworking yourself! The bags under your eyes are worsening! I’m worried!”

“These are all sacrifices I must make for the show.” 

She lets out a grunt and stands up, causing her hair band to fall onto the couch.

“Scanea, listen,” she sternly begins, “I don’t want you to go to work tomorrow. You’re too stressed, I’m worried about you, seriously.”

You stand back up and look at her straight in the eyes.

“This play is my whole dream. If I can’t complete this then what was the point of anything? You don’t understand Aubreb. I need this.”

She scoffs at you, almost as if what you just said deeply insulted her.

“Scaena. I don’t want you like this. Please, you need people to help you. Look I can he-”

“Don’t even try, honey, I’m not going to let anyone help me, otherwise I’d be a failure.”

“How?!” Aubreb grabs your hands and stares into your eyes once again, her gaze is worried and her lips are frowning.

“I can’t live with myself knowing that I had to ask for help. I just… can’t.”

“Why the hell not?!”

You free yourself from her grip and turn around.

“I’m going to bed,” you harshly announce “Good night.”.

As you walk into your bedroom, you don't even give Aubreb time to respond, as you slam the door behind you.

Tomorrow is going to be a tough day but you can do it, you believe in yourself. And, after all, the show must go on.

  
  


The next morning you wake up alone. Instinctively, you roll yourself over to Aubreb’s side of bed, hoping you two can have some morning smooches before getting up, but 

she’s nowhere to be seen, not even her pillow seems to have any sort of creases or signs she was here at all.

You get up and try to think of something else, she couldn’t have left, no, not after all you two have been through.  No, she wouldn’t do such a thing, would she? She wouldn’t leave you just because you didn’t go to sleep, would she?

You grab the bedroom door handle and hesitate for a moment. What if she’s really gone? What if, beyond this door, you’ll find a note on the table telling you how she doesn't want to be with you anymore and how she has gone to live somewhere else. What will you do then? Will you have to sell your theater to not become poor? What about your actors? You can’t leave them without a job, they’ll die out there.

You decide to get it over and done with, whatever is beyond this door, you’ll have to face it. Alone or otherwise.

“Good morning.” You hear come from the kitchen.

An overwhelming wave of relief washes over you as her tender voice reaches your ears.

Aubreb is sitting at the table, teacup in hand and slightly charred toast in plate.

You sit down on the opposite end of the table and hold your head in your hands, digging your fingers into your morning hair.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” you sputter out, reaching for a piece of her burnt toast “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

She sets down her teacup and leans forward, putting her hand on your arm and gently rubbing. 

“It’s alright dear. I understand you want to finish this project and that it means alot to you,” she stops for a second to rub her eyes with her other hand. 

“But please, take care of yourself. You seem so tired and overwhelmed and I hate seeing you like this.”

You take your hands out of your hair and hold onto her arm, softly smiling. 

“Thank you for caring.”

In an almost natural motion, the two of you share a soft kiss.

* * *

The streets of Crustgush are always filled with hundreds of trolls, commuting to work under the thick, grey blanket of clouds across the sky. The fluorescent artificial lighting fixtures that were placed all over the roads were slightly deteriorating, probably the result of the sweeps and sweeps of neglected management.

A despondent mood hung over your head as you pressed shoulder to shoulder in the cramped train carts that had just been built. They were supposed to make commutes easier, and all of the advertisement posters assured that they would ‘increase productivity’ and would ‘make commutes easier’, if anything, they caused the already problematic overpopulation in Crustgush to worsen. Usually, trolls would walk to work or take the bus, but ever since these fast and most importantly cheap train lines were installed, everyone’s been taking them.

You don’t recall how many trolls have been accidentally maimed or killed after they were pushed onto the tracks by the endless swarm of trolls, but you always let about ten or twenty trolls pass in front of you, to avoid that same fate.

With a sigh, you get off at Gorbdurb and take a deep breath of the fresh air. Everything around you is much more serene, and as the clatter of the train carts slowly disappears behind you, you make your way towards your destination.

Your theater is an imposing building, five tall indigo columns and about twenty pure white steps give the entrance an almost divine appeal. 

Leaning on one of the columns, a familiar lowblood is lighting a cigarette.

“Sup Scaena!” they call from above, putting the cigarette butt in their mouth and setting it alight.

You make your way up the stairs and walk over to them, taking a cigarette for yourself and lighting it off theirs.

“What did I tell you about the dress code, Tyaver?”

They look down at themselves momentarily and let out a small laugh.

“Wht, you got somethin against crop tops?”

“No it’s just that-” you puff your cigarette and tap on it a couple of times, making the burnt up embers gracefully float to the ground “-I’m trying to create a serious work environment, and I don’t want this type of informal clothing around. I mean, all of the others have at least made an effort to dress differently, but you always have to be the odd one out huh?”

Tyaver presses their cigarette against one of the pillars and puts the butt in a nearby bin.

“Das jus how I roll, sis!”

They boop your nose and make their way into the theater’s auditorium.

You finish off your cigarette and throw the butt in the bin, taking a mint out of your purse and throw it in your mouth. 

The auditorium is massive. It can house up to two thousand trolls, its golden statues and pure white arches across the roof fill you with an indescribable sense of awe every single time you lay your eyes upon them.

On the stage, Tyaver and three other trolls are sitting on some folding chairs, discussing between themselves.

As you walk through the aisles and run you hand over the soft, blue velvet seatings, the four trolls look up at you, reacting to the clicking of your heels in the hall.

“Look who arrived!” one of the trolls say, setting down her copy of the script on an empty chair next to her and giving you a warm smile.

You walk up the center stage steps and sit down on one of the empty chairs, eight pairs of eyes are fixed on you, awaiting what you have to say.

As you fidget on your seat from the uncomfortable and worn pillow, you look back at the four trolls in front of you, thinking of what to say.

“Well? Lay it on us chief.” One of the trolls say, leaning forward to get a better look at you.

You quickly glance down at your bag and take a large stack of papers out, loosely held together by a thin piece of rope

“Was dat?” Tyaver immediately inquires, not even giving you time to breathe.

“It’s the revised version of your scrip-”

A collective groan interrupts you as you begin untying the neat little knot keeping the scripts together.

“You’ve revised the script too many times!” Lucila whines, carefully rubbing her eyes underneath her glasses, avoiding to smudge her highblood makeup.

“We can’t keep memorizing it, Scaena.” Xaizer agrees, “We don’t have enough time.”

You hand out a copy to each troll and sit back down, setting the spare copies at your feet. 

“I didn’t change much,” you reassure “Just a couple of tweaks.”

“Tweaks?!” Tyaver exclaimes “Ya added a hole otha page sis!”

The other trolls start agreeing with them, all murmuring between each other, their voices almost fusing into a constant, white noise.

After the longest minutes of your life, they all stop talking and stare at you with an inquisitive glance.

“Are you alright?” Xaizer asked, showing compassion for once in his existence.

You snap out of your trance and return back to reality, your hands have ripped the script in half.

“Yeah,” you utter, setting the torn script down and standing up “I just need to breathe a bit.” You’re trembling.

Shakily, you raise a cigarette to your mouth only for it to fall onto the ground. Behind you, soft footsteps approach.

“I’m sorry.” Lucila says, putting her hand on your shoulder and looking down with a dismayed look. 

You turn around and crack a smile at her, letting out a little laugh too.

“It’s alright, I just feel a bit overwhelmed.”

“Why so?”

“I don’t deserve all of you. You all put up with my endless revisions, my endless whining and tweaks, I’m surprised none of you have left yet.”

She takes off her glasses and looks up at you, you’ve never seen her makeup without the glasses in the way, it's pretty.

“We would never leave, Scaena. We care about you too much.”

“What?”

“We want to stand on the stage with you, showered by applause and praise. Holding eachothers hands and realising that, yeah, we deserve this.”

You slightly sniffle at the little anecdote she just told you, despite it being a simple feel good story, it gives you the motivation to walk back into the auditorium.

As you walk through the two studded marble doors, the intoxicating smell of cigarette smoke hits your face. Despite the theater hall being huge, the smell of Tyaver’s cigarettes always reaches you, as if it were chasing you down.

“Hey!” they shout from the stage, taking the cigarette out of their mouth “Ya back!”

You make your way back to the stage and sit back down with a renewed sense of self-worth.

The following hours were filled with discussion and conversation, scrutiny of the script and very theatrical charades.

As nighttime drew nearer, the once lively discussion group began dying down. You put the spare scripts back into your back and stand up, stretching your arms toward the ceiling and letting out a sigh of relief.

“Alright,” you begin, putting the bag strap around your neck and rubbing your tired eyes “There won’t be any meeting tomorrow, you all can have a free day.”

Your announcement is met with some small cheers and joyful shouts.

* * *

The commute home was much calmer than usual, the trains, surprisingly, weren’t cramped, and the usual melancholic mood that hung in the air felt much less present. 

You walk through the now empty streets of your neighbourhood and enter your apartment, going up a couple of flights of stairs and fiddling with the keys in your hands.

The house is completely quiet, a small lamp sat on the table illuminating a note on the table.

You set down your bag on the couch and hurriedly walk over to the note, picking it up.

“Dear Scaena,

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll probably already be in the skies, flying towards Crygrorb for a business trip. I’m sorry for telling you this on such short notice, but I probably won't be home for the next couple of weeks. I left you some food in the meal vault so you should be fine.

If you have any problems, just call me!

Love u lots

\- Aubreb”

You set the note down and feel a familiar sensation, the harrowing, chilling, painful sensation.

You feel alone.

Shakily, you sit down on the chair and grab your phone, managing to dial Aubrebs number with your trembling hands.

The phone rings, but no one picks up, she must be in the plane.

She’s never left you alone, and even when she did go on business trips, they were usually just outside town, not to Crygrorb. A relentless flow of thoughts begins invading your mind, that feeling of anxiety and panic began making its way up your spine. You feel your stomach turn, your hands can’t even hold the phone properly, you’re rocking your head back and forth.

You can’t be alone, no, she’ll come back, right?

You find yourself biting on your fingernails, your breath is quavering, your vision starts getting blurry, tears are accumulating.

Will she come back? Will she? Maybe she’s finally tired of your shit huh? Did you ever think of that? Did you ever consider that your incessant whining and lack of affection pushed her away? You realise you always spend your nights in that little study of yours, writing tons and tons of copies of scripts by hand and every time she offered to help and every single time you rejected her help, you didn’t want to feel powerless, you didn’t want to feel like you weren’t capable of doing a simple, menial task on your own. Where did that bring you? You’re a mess. You’re the absolute epitome of failure. You’re filling all your friends with false hope of an amazing spectacle of a show that will make them rich enough to not have to live off the streets but you know that won’t happen, you know It’ll fail, a trainwreck into the vast ocean of fire that is your ambitions.

Your phone begins ringing.

With absurd speed, you grab your phone and instantly respond, not even seeing who the caller was.

“Hello?!” you respond in an anguished tone

“Uh, heya sis!”

It's Tyaver.

“What is it.” your tone instantly turns somber.

“I jus wanted to kno if ya were up for drinks tonite! The whole crews comin too! Y’know to celebrate!”

“I-”

“Oh shit sry I forgot sis, Aub prob already made sum plans for u two. You two are so cute together sumtimes. Anyway, see ya!”

You hear Tyaver move to hang up, with a frantic tone you quickly respond.

“No wait I’m free tonight I’ll come I’ll come.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah!” your voice wavers for a bit, you hope it isn’t too noticeable

“Great! We’ll be down at da Grub’s Gut in half an hour, see ya dere!”

Tyaver hangs up, leaving you alone with the silence of your empty hive.

You set your phone down on the table and plunge your hands into your hair, digging your fingernails into your scalp.

You let out a scream, followed by a collapse into tears. Blue streaks of mascara roll down your cheeks and stain your hands. 

The show must go on.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
